moving beyond manual operations to the world of...

Moving Beyond Manual Operations to the World of Workload Automation

AECOM shares their success with closing the books more efficiently.

OAUG Collaborate 2008 David Bumi, AECOM Grant Chen, UC4 Software

Agenda• Our company: AECOM• Our issues• First Evolution• Second Evolution• Third Evolution• Best Practices• Targets for Automation • UC4 Solution• Next Steps

Agenda• Our Company: AECOM• Our issues• First Evolution• Second Evolution• Third Evolution• Best Practices• Targets for Automation • UC4 Solution• Next Steps

AECOM Overview

• AECOM is a global provider of professional technical and management support services

• Government and commercial clients on all seven continents and in more than 60 countries

• Services provided by our Operating Companies include design, engineering and consulting; program management and construction management; and outsource technical staffing and logistical support services

AECOM Overview

• Annual Revenues in 2007: USD$4.2 Billion

• 350 offices worldwide

• Employees: 33,000

Trends in Engineering & Construction Industry

• Rapid consolidation through mergers and acquisition

• Expansion into emerging markets (Middle East, Eastern Europe, China and India)

• Regulatory Compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley)

AECOM Oracle Implementation• Oracle E-Business Suite 11i• Modules:

– GL, AR, AP, PO, iExpense, FA, Projects, HR, CM, and OTL

• 19 Operating Units• Globally Siloed Departments

– No standardized processes– No single point of control

• 52 week Project Accounting Periods– Must close PA each week – tight SLA’s.

Agenda• Our Company: AECOM• Our issues• First Evolution• Second Evolution• Third Evolution• Best Practices• Targets for Automation • UC4 Solution• Next Steps

Our Issues: Oracle E-Business Suite

Issues with an enterprise-wide system• Number of Operating Units• Number of Project Periods• Volume of Projects• Number of Organizations

More Issues: Oracle E-Business Suite

Issues with an enterprise-wide system (cont.)

• Time & Resource Constraints• Reporting Requirements• Tracking Spawned Child Processes• Interfaces – Internal/External• Disparate Systems

Project Accounting Close Process

Issue Consequences• Loss of Revenue

– Delays in customer billing– Misstated financials– Loss of project bonuses

• Increased Costs– Increase in staff– Custom development– Lack of timely and accurate data– Project penalties– Missed contract milestones

First Evolution

• First wave of go-live took place in November 2004

• Two operating units• Approach:

– Closing was initially ran by implementation team– Submitted concurrent requests one by one– Run each operating unit’s close sequentially

• Issues:– Not many issues - relatively simple environment

Exceptions Tracker

First Evolution (Continued)

• Second wave of go-live occurred in early 2005

• Implemented 5 additional operating units • Approach:

– 7 “dummy” usernames for each operating unit– Decentralized closing: relied on the business unit

folks to identify and resolve issues– Created request sets to automate concurrent

requests submission

First Evolution (Continued)

• Issues: – Business unit folks didn’t want to work on

Saturday– Some of business unit folks didn’t know how to

resolve exceptions – Closing time was getting increasingly long:

Number of stakeholders involved in the process did not lead to operational efficiency – numerous handoffs in the closing process

Second Evolution

• Third wave of go-live occurred in July 2005: implemented 6 additional operating units

• Total Number of operating units: 13

• Approach:– Created request sets to automate processing – Centralized Closing: Delegated request set

submissions to IT Operations team

Second Evolution (continued)

• Issues:– 13 different usernames created an audit risk– Exceptions weren’t getting resolved – analysts

were busy checking tons of reports– Integrate new analysts to the Projects closing

process

Operational Spreadsheet

DH AAC DAV ME PD SUR CTE TCNB AEI DHN CORP AGS

Sequence Name ERROR4 PRC: Distribute Labor Costs No Data 2849365 No Info 284943010 PRC: Distribute Usage and Miscellaneous Costs22 AUD: Supplier Costs Interface Audit 284897023 AUD: Supplier Costs Interface Audit24 AUD: Supplier Costs Interface Audit26 AUD: Supplier Costs Interface Audit32 PRC: Distribute Total Burdened Cost37 PRC: Distribute Usage and Miscellaneous Costs43 PRC: Borrowed and Lent Amounts Distribution Report 2849257 2850504 2850110 2850105 No Info53 PRC: Tieback Invoices from Receivables57 PRC: Tieback Invoices from Receivables67 PRC: Tieback Invoices from Receivables 2850205 Didn’t run68 EXC: Transaction Exception Details by PA Period 2849209 2850330 2850344 Didn’t run69 EXC: Transaction Exception Details by GL Period 2849208 2849211 2849753 2850338 2850314 2850332 2850346 Didn’t run

77 Post A/R A/P to G/L NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

78 Run AECOM AP Invoices Not Transferred to PA Report NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA79 Notify Operations to proceed with Cycle 2 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

81 PRC: Generate Draft Revenue for a Range of Projects 2851570 2851578 2851584 completed 2851598 No Data 2851607 No Data88 PRC: Borrowed and Lent Amounts Distribution Report 2851781 with 285189792 EXC: Transaction Exception Details by PA Period 2851722 error93 EXC: Transaction Exception Details by GL Period

AIMS Analyst

CYCLE 1

CYCLE 2

Exceptions

Close Processes for 13 Opcs Exceptions Saturday July 15, 2006Close Process for Cycle 1 and Cycle 2

PROD

ASG Finance

AECOM’s Alternative Solutions

As we were getting ready for global operations, we were faced with the following issues:

• Siloed OU’s/No Central Point of Control– Used shared username/responsibility

• Cumbersome Exception Management– Used shared username/responsibility to initiate

and view PA reports.• Strict Service Level Agreements (weekly PA Close)

– Throw more people at the problem: 5 Operators taking 36 hours to close PA periods

Buy vs Build Analysis

• Build a custom solution to meet AECOM’s business requirements

• Buy a solution that meets our criteria:– Management by Exception – Our solution must be scalable to meet business

needs: as more business units are integrated into Oracle e-Business Suite, the number of operating units will keep increasing

– Each business unit is responsible for resolving issues identified by AppWorx

Third Evolution

• Fourth wave of go-live with global business units

• April 2006: 3 additional operating units

• June 2006: 1 additional operating unit

• Total number of operating units: 17

Third Evolution (continued)

• Approach:– AppWorx closing– AppWorx system administrator

• Issues:– As global companies go live in Oracle, the number

of stakeholders involved in the process increases

Current Status Today

• Global Oracle Financials closing process is centralized in Los Angeles

• Number of Operating Units: 19• Number of Countries: 5 (US, Australia, New

Zealand, Hong Kong, and United Kingdom)• Closing is done through AppWorx• Benefit:

– Empower business analysts to focus on higher value activities

Current Schedule• Cycle 1 for Global

Business Units:– New Zealand– Australia– Hong Kong– United Kingdom

• Cycle 1 for US Business Units:– Financial close for all

business units

• Cycle 2 for All Business Units:– Post close for all

business units

Best Practices

• Centralize/standardize, simplify, and automate closing process

• Automation allows a shift of processing time to non-working hours

• Keep a library of “output scan” error messages and their resolutions

Agenda• Our company: AECOM• Our issues• First Evolution• Second Evolution• Third Evolution• Best Practices• Targets for Automation• UC4 Solution• Next Steps

Automation “Targets” in PA Process

• In general, where do you find manual processing?

– Report output verification and error correction

– Error notification

– Parent/child process tracking

– Integration with other applications

UC4 Solution

• Only Product in our space that is Validated for Oracle 11i E-Business Suite

UC4 Solution

• AppWorx automates the Project close process, reducing processing time and eliminating typical errors– Schedule PA close processes across multiple

operating units, providing a single point of control and coordination

– Sub-Variables for PRC interface processing by operating unit

– Output scanning for PRC interface errors– Error notification through email, pager, etc…– Attachment of output files for report distribution

UC4 Project Close Solution

Project Accounting Close Process

– Close Cycle 11. Import Transactions from Other Systems2. Distribute and Interface Labor3. Create and Distribute Burden Costs4. Distribute and Interface Usage and Misc Costs5. Distribute and Interface Exp. Rpt. Costs to AP (Summary

Report)6. Interface Supplier Costs from Payables7. Interface Supplier Costs from Payables (Oracle Bug 80%)8. Interface Supplier Costs from Payables (Oracle Bug 90% of

20%)9. Interface Expense Reports from Payables (Oracle Bug

remainder)10. Distribute and Interface Supplier Invoice Adj. to AP11. Create and Distribute Burden Costs for a Range of Projects


– Close Cycle 1 (continued)12. Distribute and Interface Burdened Costs13. Interface Usage and Misc Costs to GL14. Distribute and Interface Borrowed and Lent Amounts to GL15. Generate Asset Lines for a Range of Projects16. Interface Assets to Oracle Assets17. Interface Draft Invoices to AR18. Interface Intercompany Invoice to AR19. Interface Draft Revenue to GL20. Generate Intercompany Invoices21. Interface Intercompany Invoices to AR22. Transaction Exception Details by PA Period23. Transaction Exception Details by GL Period


– Close Cycle 21. Generate Draft Revenue for a Range of

Projects2. Interface Draft Revenue to GL3. Distribute and interface Borrowed and Lent

amounts to GL4. Transaction Exception Details by PA Period5. Transaction Exception Details by GL Period


PA Process with UC4

• AppWorx Projects Solution in conjunction with AppWorx Financial Period Close Solution allow for any sized company to improve the following best practices:

– Automated Daily Business Close– Accurately process Intra-company and Inter-company

transactions.– Cost management – Improve timeliness in project related

costing.– Receivables – Reduce billing cycle time with more frequent

project billing loads.– Data Reliability – Project Managers have more reliable data

to make business decisions against.– Provides organization scalability without additional

resource costs.

Realized Benefits

Agenda• Our company: AECOM• Our issues• First Evolution• Second Evolution• Third Evolution• Targets for Automation • Best Practices• UC4 Solution• Next Steps

Next Steps

Potential next phase projects:

• Integrate UC4 with the help desk system

• Reporting instance cloning

• Include non-Oracle application processing

• AECOM uses the UC4 Project Accounting and Financial Period Close solutions:

– Shortened close process from 5 FTE’s over 36 hrs to 1 FTE and 6hrs

– Improved resource workload management– Resource Reassignment to higher value-add tasks - operations

department handles close process instead of analysts– Scalability: Scaled from 10 OU’s to 19 w/o additional PA staff– Reduced audit risk – eliminated users using shared

username/responsibility– Proactive Project Accounting processing– Enhanced notification– Improved data quality

AECOM Success Story

About UC4 Software Inc.

Who is UC4 Software?

• Creators of innovative, feature-rich, proven software for application infrastructure and IT workload automation– AMAP HQ in Seattle, WA

• Global office locations– 1500+ customers worldwide– 130+ Oracle EBS customers– Most Visionary in Market – Gartner Group– Key Partnerships: Oracle, OAUG Star Partner,

Solution Beacon, Hotsos…

Any Questions?

Contact Information

Targeted conference calls, web demonstrations or on-site presentations:

David Bumi – IT [email protected]

Grant Chen – Oracle Solutions [email protected]

UC4 Software, [email protected]

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